Hearthstone: How to make gold, get cards, and succeed for free

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Blizzard’s insanely popular digital CCG Hearthstone has finally exited beta and officially released. Now, Blizzard not only stands to make much more money from the sale of card packs to the influx of new players, but the existing players are looking forward to casually stomping that influx of new blood. There will absolutely be a gap in deck strength between the new players and the veterans, which is what Blizzard is hoping will spur many newbies to shell out cash for packs. However, if you don’t want to give in to Blizzard’s whims, you can still be quite successful in Hearthstone as a free-to-play player, but you’ll need to follow a strict regiment.

Update 3/12/14: You can look at the patch notes here. The first major additions to the live version of the game consist of golden hero portraits and powers that you can earn once reaching 500 wins per hero, and two frequently used legendary cards — Tinkmaster Overspark and Nat Pagle — have been nerfed to ensure that they aren’t used in almost every single competitive deck like they were.

In Hearthstone, you can’t trade cards and there’s no way to buy singles. Blizzard has stated multiple times that the lack of card-trading and an auction house that sells singles is extremely intentional — it is what it is, so you have to go at it alone.

The best way to earn gold

Like most free-to-play games, there is an in-game currency that can be earned for free. You can purchase a single pack (containing five cards, with one guaranteed to be rare) for 100 gold, or you can spent 150 gold on an entry ticket into the arena. There are a four ways to earn in-game gold, though only three are repeatable.

Daily quests: Each day, you’ll receive a new quest. In true World of Warcraft fashion, they’re simple and grindy. Get five PvP wins with a certain hero, deal 100 damage to enemies, summon 40 creatures that cost 5 or more mana, and so on. Quests can be worth a different amount of gold depending on the difficulty, such as 40, 60, or even 100. If you’re a time-saver, an efficient strategy is to let your quest log fill up to the maximum of three quests, and hope some of them overlap so you complete one while trying to complete another. However, you do not receive new quests if your queue is full, so if you miss a daily quest, you’ll miss free gold.

PvP wins: For every set of three wins, you earn 10 gold. You can only earn up to 100 gold this way per day, which amounts to 30 wins. (It used to be unlimited, but Blizzard wanted to cut down on bots.) Though Hearthstone is fast-paced, 30 wins per day takes an enormous amount of time considering you won’t win every single match. Players have been complaining about this forever, so don’t worry, you don’t have to.

Hidden quests: If you complete certain milestones, such as beating every hero’s expert AI, you’ll earn a one-time reward — usually gold. There are many hidden quests, and completing them before you delve deep into the game will net you a decent amount of startup capital, as well as some cards with a legendary rarity. Check out the hidden quests here.

Arena: This is where free-to-play players live, and you can purchase an entry ticket for 150 gold. The Arena is complex, so it’s detailed in its own section below.

It’s tough to earn in-game gold, but at the end of the day, Blizzard needs to make money, so they need to limit your ability to generate free gold.